I am seriously considering giving up my Facebook account.
It's not that I don't love all my friends -- I do. It's just that I find that I rarely post anything of substance, merely repost interesting links I find. I do post links to this blog sometimes, sending along posts I am particularly pleased with or proud of. I don't talk about what is going on (in part because there is nothing interesting going on that I care to talk about). I am more likely to post information here than there -- if for no other reason that the character limits drive me crazy. (Same reason I don't use Twitter: it seems I am constitutionally unable to say anything in 140 characters.) Delicate issues, to the limited extent that I talk about them, are reserved for a small filter on my LiveJournal.
It is a time sink of the first order. I have managed to break my Bejeweled addiction (losing the computer it was stored on helped a lot with that one), only to replace it with Facebook. I don't have time for this -- it is hard enough for me to get things done without following links to Sarah Palin speeches or excerpts from the Daily Show.
The people whom I got it for -- the people who I am most interested in following -- are too busy living their lives to post about it. The difficulty is that there are some among my friends who use the service in the best possible way -- letting people know about important aspects of their lives. (Not to mention the Rocket Scientist, who tends to post things like the fact that he landed safely in wherever, which helps my peace of mind.) I don't want to give up that connection, especially to friends who are far away.*
It exacerbates what I see as my greatest failing: my absolute difficulty in getting things done in the absence of externally imposed structure. I need the structure of someone telling me "I need this by Thursday" or even "I needed this yesterday, can you help me" to be effective. I can move mountains, if I have to, to meet important deadlines. (Yes, I tend to procrastinate -- I still get things done.) I thrive in academia, in large part because there are such deadlines. (And that someone has to be a concrete entity or person, not simply "x is going to happen to you personally." I have far more of a sense of responsibility towards others than towards myself. Or my family, unfortunately.) I am somewhat tempted to make a comment about it being in keeping with my newly discovered Pisces orientation, but then again, not.
I have been working on imposing my own structure with mixed success. I guess that's the part of being a grownup I've never really mastered. Maybe it's time to grow up some more.
* Yes, know you can use filters. I can never figure out whom to put on them.
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